33: Boosting Metabolism and Managing Menopause with Ellen Ludwig

Hello and welcome to the Keeping It Breast podcast with Dr. Jen. The show dedicated to empowering women through knowledge, tools, and resources to take control of your breast health journey. I'm your host, Dr. Jen Simmons, and I'm thrilled to have you join me on this insightful and inspiring journey. As a breast cancer surgeon turns functional medicine physician, I'm on a mission to empower women to live their breasts and need best lives. This podcast dives deep into all topics related to breast health, including prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and holistic approaches to support overall well being.

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Hello, hello, hello.

Welcome back to another episode of keeping abreast with Dr. Jen. I am your host, Dr. Jen Simmons, and I'm here every week trying to bring you information that I hope change your life. And I talk all the time about, you know, we have seasons of life, and as those seasons of life change, so too does our metabolism. And much of the changes that are happening in our metabolism are happening as a result of a change in muscle mass as compared to how much fat you have. And. And this isn't about gaining weight. This is literally about a transformation of your body composition. And so I thought that because this is a problem for everyone across the board, I thought that it was a really, really, really important conversation to have. And so I am delighted to have Ellen Ludwig here today so that we can talk about this together, because Ellen is a certified coach for the Faster Weighted Fat Loss program. And I don't know if you guys know about that program, but it is amazing. She's a certified macro coach. She's certified in menopause for women athletes. So this is someone that knows her stuff, has been doing it a long time, and this is the person that has seen these changes that happen just as a part of nature, as our hormones change, you have helped women to combat that change. So I'm so delighted to have you here and to speak to my audience about this very, very, very important topic.

Absolutely. Thanks, Dr. Jen, for having me on. I feel like I could talk about this topic all day long, so.

Good. Well, we'll have you for the next hour.

Yeah, you can.

You can talk our ear off for the next hour. So first, I would love to hear A little background how you got into this space and then what made you interested in helping the. The menopausal postmenopausal woman. Yeah. Thank you.

Okay. So I was telling Dr. Jen earlier a little bit about myself. I always say that fitness found me. I didn't find fitness. I, in fact, fell in love with exercising when I was 12 years old. I, you know, and a lot of people, you know, in middle school, you kind of like, start. You start dabbling in sports and, you know, maybe you get more into sports, and that's usually the only form of exercise. But I found myself actually going to our local fitness center when I was in middle school. And I realized early on that there was a huge reward for the way exercising made you feel and made you look. And so I became addicted to that from the time I was 12. And I've never looked back. Literally exercised up until the day that I had both of my kids. And it's.

God bless you. You know, you're really lucky because for people like me, there is no worse torture than exercise. I'm going to give a shout out to a woman who probably doesn't want to be thought of as my trainer, but is my trainer. Her name is Jen Moore, and I love her. She's been my friend for decades, but I love her as a person, and I hate seeing her twice a week. Like, hate it. Really hate it.

Yep, it can. And it's so true. Exercise, it can feel like a chore. And I do feel so grateful. And I. Every morning, I, you know, it's. I. I wake up thinking, oh, my gosh, I am so grateful that I actually look forward to exercising every day. So. But listen, ladies, whether you like it or you don't like, is our duty to take care of our bodies. And it is something just like brushing your teeth that you have to do. Okay? Yeah. So we need to sometimes put our big girl pants on. Just like we tell our kids that. You know what, there's things in life that you don't necessarily like to do, but you have to do them. This is part of life. We only have one body. Only one body. And we, many of us here, and I know, many of your listeners know, and they know how fortunate they are to have that body. So we have to take care of it. And this is. There's a way that we can do it in a way that actually works with our hormones and supports our hormones versus working against them. And we're going to talk about that.

Yeah. And you did say that we have a Duty to take care of our bodies. So I just want anyone who has a religious inclination to know we are actually commanded. We are commanded to take care of our bodies. So let's talk about why. Why did you have an interest in working with menopausal women?

Oh, yeah, great. Sorry, didn't answer that question.

No, it's okay.

I am 44 now. I'll be 45 in about six weeks. And I've been an online health and fitness host, a kid, for 10 years. And so gradually, as I got older and I started helping more and more women. My, the women that I was helping, they were aging and I. Everybody was coming to me basically at 52. Some days, I swear, every single client is 52.

Right. I just wonder if you know that that is a time for a lot of women where they lose control of their body. So at least for, for my purposes, like I've been an athlete my whole life and I haven't really had to go to the gym to maintain my body. And all of a sudden I hit 48, went into menopause, and I was like, where did this stomach come from? I've never had a stomach, but it changes. Like your body changes. And I'm sure that that's why people are finding you.

Exactly. It's literally like they woke up one night, one morning, to bed one night, woke up one morning, hit two feet on the ground and they look down and they're like, where did this come from? Just like you said. Because like you said, oh, I was an athlete, like, I didn't really have to do much to maintain my body or. And that's so often when I hear of like, oh, you know, I just doing the thing. Maybe I was exercising, maybe I was just, I was walking. You know, I love walking or just walking or I just doing my cardio that I always did in my 20s and 30s. Or I've just not really changed anything with my nutrition. Well, listen up, ladies. We simply cannot, not only can we rely on the exercise modalities or non exercise modalities that we got away with in our younger years, we simply cannot eat the way, you know that. You know, I used to say, oh, I could like go out for dinner and I could get dessert every night. Every night. I was like, oh, this, I must just be like so lucky. This was in my 30s that like I could just like get dessert every night and it just didn't affect me. Well, that was not the story in my 40s and so that slowly. And I have a very, I have A pretty big body awareness and how things affect me. Not everybody has that.

So.

So what happens is over time, it's kind of like you turn 40 and that just slowly starts to happen. So then you're in your late 40s and it's like really happening. And by the time you're 52 and you've not changed anything in your 40s, then it is. You wake up and you're like, oh. So it just all compounds because we simply. Yes, in your 20s and 30s, your metabolism was a lot faster. There were just things that you could get away with that you could do or not do, and everything was fine. Yeah. Just have to change things.

And I think what a lot of people don't realize is that an important part of our metabolism is how much muscle mass we maintain and how much muscle mass we retain over the years. Because muscle is much more metabolically active than fat. And it takes very little to maintain fat. Very little. Very little in terms of calories. Very little. Like it's easy to stay fat. Right? Very easy. Hard to lose fat. And with muscle, like you want to maintain that muscle mass so that you can maintain your metabolism. And this is especially important in cancer because cancer is a metabolic disease. So you don't. If you, if you want to maintain your metabolic health, you need to maintain your muscle mass, but that gets increasingly harder as you age.

Absolutely. So I don't know if you're aware of this statistic, but listen, we lose 3 to 5% of our muscle mass every decade after the age of 30. Okay. Again, so if you've got listeners out there that are younger too, I mean, this needs to happen in your 30s, in your 40s, 40s and your 50s and your 60s, and all of a sudden you're in your 50s and 60s and you've done nothing to, you know, work on, you know, building that, that muscle up. It was not too late. I'm going to tell you that late, no matter where, what age you are. I.

Is it never too late?

Never, never too late. I work with women in their 70s who are just getting started. So as we go through menopause and, and estrogen declines. Estrogen is our hormone that is like our muscle building hormone. We need estrogen to build muscle, but it declines. So we have to combat that. The way to combat that is to strength train. And also you have to eat well. Okay. They go hand in hand. Strength training and nutrition. So we could lift weights all day long. But if we're not fueling our bodies correctly, then we're not going to build the muscle. So we need to do both and it's not too late to start.

Amazing. So how do we do that? What do women need to do in order to stop that process and then build and maintain muscle?

Yeah, absolutely. So the first thing that you can do is, is just even two days a week, ladies, it's two to three days. We're not talking, you know, every, every day we need to be lifting you.

You don't need to be like my 17 year old son and go to the gym for 2 hours every single day.

You don't, you don't. If you are just starting out, I Recommend Starting with 2 to 3 days and we're talking, you can even start with basic. Jen's got a trainer, which is great. I coach a program, which is great. It's great to follow a plan. But even if you are starting out with basic, basic lunges, you know, lunges, squats, bicep, I guarantee a lot bicep curls, you know, some bench rows, some overhead shoulder presses, some push ups that you can even start doing on your knees. You can start if you're just starting out with body weight. Resistance training. Yeah, we start with body weight, then we want to work our way up with light weights. I do want to say, ladies, lifting some heavier weights is not going to make you bulky. It is really hard to get bulky as a woman. And I think we have this again, it's like, we have this mindset of like, oh, we're just gonna like look like the Hulk. We're all gonna, we don't have testosterone and, and as we go through menopause, we're losing testosterone. Most of us have testosterone that's in the tank. So that's not going to happen to you. Yeah, but you ideally want to be able to work your way up where you're safely lifting. We're putting the three and five pound weights away. I mean this is where you're going to start with. But we'd like to ideally get to a place where we're lifting heavy weights so we can put that stimulus on our muscle to actually build it. Muscle needs a stimulus, it breaks down and then it built, it repairs itself by building, building back up. There are so many benefits of strength training that you, as I said, it is your duty that you do not want to miss out on. Yeah.

So let's talk about some of those benefits because I think people really need to know. So what, what does strength training do that like cardiovascular exercise doesn't do? Because I think so many People focus on cardiovascular. They think like, oh, that's how I'm going to burn my calories. So let's. Let's talk about that.

I love this. So you talked about metabolic health, and it is a fact, as I said, we lose 3 to 5% muscle mass as we age. Every decade after the age of 30, when we lose muscle, we are declining our metabolism. That is why your motab, your metabolism goes down. The way to increase your metabolism is to get more lean muscle mass on your body.

Yep.

Muscle is. That's what's burning. That's what's revving that metabolism. It simply. The more muscle we have on our body, the. The more energy is required for us to just simply exist as a person. That's. Then you can get away with having.

You're burning. You're burning more on the couch.

Yep. You're just.

The more muscle you have, the more you burn it, you're burning on the couch.

And that is called our basal metabolic rate. That increase is our basal metabolic rate. So, I mean, that. That is like, amen. Like, that's what we want. We want to be able to get that metabolism going. You want, like, a flexible metabolism, and we do that by adding more muscle on our bodies. Cardio simply isn't going to do that. P. Yes. When you're going out for a walk or you're getting on the, you know, elliptical machine or whatever, you're going to burn some calories, but you're not doing anything to build the muscle. And so we simply have to get that muscle built up so you can burn more calories. It's.

And, and I think what people don't realize is, first of all, if you run for an hour, yes, you will build. You were burn 600 calories. But 600 calories is like nothing to consume. You're going to. You're going to consume that right back. Whereas if you lifted weights for an hour and built muscle during it, when you're done running for that hour, that's when your, Your calorie burning stops. But if you lift weights for an hour, your calorie burning goes on and on.

Yeah. All day. All day long.

It's.

And. And here's the thing with cardio, too. And cardio is good for your vascular health. Yeah.

Okay. Please know I'm not bashing cardio.

No, I know. And I think. And so. And I agree, too, because sometimes I talk so much about strength training that I don't ever want to be. I'm not a cardio hater. I Actually had an active recovery day. I was on the elliptical this morning for an hour, getting some work done and just, you know, working on my cardiovascular health. Okay, so, but listen, our bodies adapt to cardio too. So when we first start running, we may burn 600 calories in an hour. But as we, as our bodies get used to that, we become more efficient. And so we burn less and less and less. And so that's why, again, like, that's not the way. Just, we just want to make sure we have a well rounded exercise regime. But also on the metabolic health, one of the big things, and this is so big for preventing cancer too, is blood sugar. Okay? Yes. The more muscle we have on our body, the more able our body is to regulate blood sugar. Okay. So that is our glucose response after we eat. So after we eat a meal, then let's just say depending on what the meal was, if our meal might have been like really carb heavy, especially in not so healthy carbs, then we're going to see our, our glucose go up. Okay? And it is normal for your glucose to rise after you eat. But what can happen is, is we don't have the, that when we don't have all that muscle on our body that's going to, you know, help to bring that down. Our glucose can stay elevated. And we don't, that's what we don't want. We don't want that glucose to stay.

Elevated, especially because any time that, you know, having elevated glucose is actually a dangerous condition for the body. So we have a bunch of protective mechanisms built in. And one of those protective mechanisms is insulin. Because what, what insulin allows us to do is pull that glucose out of the blood and deposit it into the tissues. And the problem is insulin is a growth factor, right? It's a growth hormone. And it also stimulates the production of insulin, like growth factor, another growth factor, another growth hormone. And these are states that people, whether you're cancering or not, you don't want to be in that sort of growth state, because that is about a storage state, that's about creating more fat cells. And that's really what you don't want.

To do, especially if you're cancering.

Because if you're cancering, this is just promoting tumor growth.

Yep, 100%.

But it's not good for anyone. No, right, exactly. Not good for anyone, especially people who are cancering.

One of the other things I love about resistance training is it helps us to build stronger bones. Okay. When we are going through menopause and we are losing Estrogen. Estrogen's declining estrogen, as I said, it helps to, you know, it's like, helps to keep that muscle around. It also helps estrogen also helps to keep our bones healthy. And so when our estrogen declines, then our, our, the strength of our bones starts to decline with it.

Yeah.

Doing heavy resistance train training can actually help to build stronger bones. So we, we need this as much as we can. We all know we, we don't want to get ourselves into an osteoporosis state, which is so easy to get into. So strength training absolutely is going to help combat that. Yeah, yeah.

And that's a really important point because when we look at the statistics, you know, there's so many pink ribbons out there and listen, I'm not insulting P, you and I share a deep, deep, deep love for pink. But there's a lot of pink ribbons out there and a lot of people who think that they're helping to find a cure for breast cancer, which that's a whole other hoax that I don't feel like talking about today. But when we look at the actual statistics, as many women die every year as a result of a fracture that do of breast cancer. Yep. Right. These are shocking statistics, and yet we don't give people the tools to take care of their bones. There's plenty of doctors writing for DEXA scans, there's plenty of doctors writing for bisphosphonates, But I will actually refer you to my podcast that I did with Kevin Ellis if you want to know about bone health, because he went all into it. But the truth is that bisphosphonates, what they do is our bones have a normal seven year cycle. So every time we're walking around doing whatever we're doing, when we are doing things that involve gravity, then we're putting pressure on the bones, we're stressing the bones, we're causing these little tiny micro fractures, and part of the remodeling process actually makes our bones stronger. But if you're not doing weight bearing activity, then you're not getting those little micro fractures in the bone and you're not healing the bone and you're not making the bone stronger. Bisphosphonates, which are given to women who have a DEXA scan that shows that they have low bone density, stops that process. It halts that process. So it doesn't allow for the repairs, it just stops the process. It does deposit more calcium into the outside of the bone, the cortex of the bone. But bone strength has to do with bone density. Yes, but it also has to do with bone flexibility. And when you deposit more calcium into the outside and you don't allow for the repair mechanism, you're not changing the fracture risk because you're actually giving people these brittle bones and they have atypical fractures because they lost that bone flexibility. So part of the weight bearing exercise is to allow you to have those micro fractures in your bone and allow your body to do what it's supposed to do. We are such smart machines. We just don't give the machine what it needs.

Yeah, we're not out there, you know, in the, in the fields running around, picking up, have, you know, picking up heavy things anymore. Like we were, you know, like our ancestors were. Yep, absolutely. Yeah.

I mean, we didn't have wheels and cars and you know, we, we are modern beings living on a very old gene code. So our bodies only know certain things. We, we had to lift heavy things. Like how else did we put the boulder in front of the cave at night? Yeah, we had to lift heavy things. We had to carry things from place to place. Like we had to lift heavy things.

Absolutely. And speaking of heavy things, just bringing in groceries. Right? Just. I mean, I don't know about you, but I love, I live in a cold weather climate, so I have a garage, but my garage is cold. So when I'm bringing in groceries, I want to bring in as many bags. I mean, you know, we're trying to bring in as many bags as we can.

I have both arms loaded up all the way.

And then, you know, and then you're reaching up to close your, your, close your trunk. And you know, we want to be able to do that. We want to be able to do that as we age. We want to be able to get up and off. I don't have grandkids, but I will someday. And I want to be able to get up and off the floor with my grandkids. Yeah, I want to, you know, I want to be around for a long time. And you want to be feeling good and pre injury, right? Yeah. You were saying, you know, it's like we, we know that, you know, the bone fractures happen just as, just as much as breast cancer does. We want to prevent injury. We want to prevent aches and pains. When we strengthen our glutes, do you know what happens? We have less back pain. We need strong glutes. You glute. Strengthening your glutes is one of the most important things that you can do. That's the most important muscle to work on your body. That's where you're going to prevent that back injury. We know so many women who are walking around with, you know, sore backs. Yeah. It's also going to help to strengthen your knees. I work with a lot of women who come to me at first and they're like, oh my gosh. You know, I just, they're like, I can't, I see you do all these lunges and squats and I can't do them. And then they, they join and I get them strength training and eating a very anti inflammatory diet and they're like, wow, I cannot believe I don't need to take Tylenol anymore or aspirin. My knees are feeling better. They never thought that their aches and pains were going to go away. And it's simply because we're strengthening those muscles.

Yeah.

Around those joints.

No, it's really goes a long way towards your functionality and your body is something that if you don't move it, you lose it. Amen.

Yeah, Amen. Yeah.

We have to lose our, we have to move our bodies or we're going to lose it. And I think that that is a large part of why our elderly are so sick because they're not moving their bodies in a meaningful way and they're not, they're not maintaining their muscle mass and they're having horrible problems with bone health and with strength and with endurance because they have allowed, you know, the sitting is the new smoking and, and we just don't have these active lives anymore. You know, you had to, you had to walk to the store, you had to walk to the village, you had to walk to the, to the places. And now you don't have to do that anymore. Yep.

You have to be intentional movement. And that is another thing with our metabolic rate declining is just like you said, sitting. And you know, when you're in your 20s and 30s and you have young kids and you're, you're again, you're up and off the floor with your kids, you're running around the house. Maybe if you were a stay at home mom kind of depending, but, or on the weekends you're so much more active and all of a sudden you get in this place where you're just sitting all the time. And you know what? Sitting begins. More sitting movement begets more movement. So you have to be intentional. And I know that can be hard for women who, you know, might, you know, work all day and they can't get up. So you know what you have to do? You have to set an alarm on your phone. You need to set an alarm like every hour. Okay. I'm gonna take a quick, like 10 minute, 5 minute walk around the office. Yeah. But you absolutely have to be intentional.

Or even better, go outside.

Yep.

Yeah. I know it's not 100 for everyone in, in, you know, all climates, but ideally, for every hour that you work, you should be walking around for 15 minutes, preferably outside, away from that toxic.

Indoor environment and preferably after you've eaten a meal too. When we're talking about blood sugar, walking is a good.

Makes a huge difference to bring that.

To bring that glucose and you don't even need much.

10 or 15 minutes. 10 seconds. 10, 15 minutes after every meal will make a huge difference in blood sugar control.

You could even get up from your desk and do squats. Just do some air squats. Just, you could do some air squats. You could just move your body and that can go a long way. One other benefit I wanted to talk about, Jen, and I think you're going to be able to, to speak to this is when we have more muscle mass on our body. Should we go into a surgery. We are going to be stronger going into that surgery and recovering a lot faster too. And I think that's also just one other thing for your community that they, that they should know. I have a client who was diagnosed with breast cancer and she was going in for a double mastectomy and she was like, you know what? I am the healthiest and the strongest I've ever been. And my doctor said I'm going to go through this with flying colors because of the shape that I've put my body in now. And she went through and she's feeling fantastic now and she knows that everything that she did leading up to that helped her come out stronger. Yeah. Yeah.

I actually back from my surgery days, I remember a patient, Helene. Helene, if you're listening, I'm talking about you. And she, she was a tennis player and I'm a tennis player, so I fully understand the addiction. And she, that like the couple days before her mastectomy, she said, when can I play tennis again? And I was like, helene, like, we can't even talk about this. And she came back for her two week post op visit and she had already played.

Wow.

Because she went into her surgery so healthy that it was like no big deal for her.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's incredible. And I, that is so important to know. We, we want our bodies primed to handle anything that comes at us.

Yep.

So, of course, like, we're not thinking about that surgery that we don't know that we may have in the future. But you know what? I want to be ready. I want to be ready for anything that might be thrown at me. Yeah.

But you know, the main thing, because I hope that you never have that surgery. The main thing is to be ready for life.

Exactly.

When we look at what the last decade or two decades of life look like in this country compared to places around the world like the Blue Zones, we are so much sicker and have so much more suffering and hospitalizations than when we compare ourselves to what the last two decades of life looks like in a place where they are eating real food because a lot of people in this country are not. They're sleeping at night because they're not inundated with electronics. They are moving their body because they have to. They live in a village where they have to walk miles every single day. They're lifting heavy things because there's no other way to, to get the things that you want. You have to go pick your food and hunt and you know, do whatever you're going to do to get your food. And I think one of the most important parts that probably is pretty meaningful for what you do is they have tremendous senses of community.

Oh, absolutely, 100%. I'm so glad you brought that up because I have a community. I, I coach women through a six week, a six week program and then they have the option to continue on it. It's a group coaching. So they start out on their journey with you know, maybe like 100 other women together and then they go into another community where I have, you know, over a thousand members in there. And every time I talk to them I say, you don't realize when they're joining. This is like the best friends virtually that you never knew that you, that existed, that you never knew that you needed. And that's what, what keeps them there. Community is everything. Being surrounded by like minded individuals is, is what's going to help keep you going. You absolutely. If you're, if, if you're into, you know, health and fitness and all of your friends aren't, it's really hard to be. You feel like you're like the black sheep when really you're the one who's winning there. And it is really hard to stay on your journey when you're, when you're doing it on a note on your own. We simply cannot just be on an island. Community is everything. And I know, Jen, you've got your amazing community as well that I've been a part of and love to see that, too.

So.

Absolutely. Well, I'm.

I'm so glad that we could have this conversation today and that you are available to my community, because when you are on a breast cancer journey, oftentimes there's a lot of things that need to change, and it's really super overwhelming, like the statistics that apply to most people in this country. I think I was speaking with someone yesterday who was telling me that I think the new numbers, because I knew the numbers of metabolic health to be around 86% of Americans were not metabolically healthy. But Marcel Pick told me yesterday that it's 93%. 93% of Americans are not metabolically healthy. And so, you know, the vast majority of the women that I see for breast cancer are not metabolically healthy. And it's the very first thing that they really need to do to get in line. But they. They're so overwhelmed with their diagnosis and what they need to do for treatment that thinking about how to eat and how to move are not really up on their priority list. Because truthfully, we have just been taught to fail. We have been taught to get sick and take a pill, get sick and have a surgery, get sick and have a procedure. We've never been taught to care for our bodies. And this goes back to what you said in the very beginning, that we all need to guard our health. We need to do the things that we need to do to take care of our health. And. And we have a duty to take care of our bodies. And when we don't, we have all of this dysfunction. So I know how important community is because it keeps you accountable, and it does make it easier when you're going it with other people and not going it alone. And women with breast cancer have enough challenges ahead of them, enough roadblocks ahead of them, and everything looks like a mountain. So can you leave us with a couple of things that will make this mountain just feel a little easier to climb?

Yeah, absolutely. So I would say, yeah, first and foremost, just like that community, if you are feeling like you're on an island, reach out. Like, I would love to help you. There's, you know, of course there's lots of women out there that can help you. Following a plan is something that is just going to help help you be a lot more successful than trying it on your own. I have found trying it on your own only can, you know, take you so far. So have a plan. Have somebody who's going to be by your side, a coach or a trainer who can show you the way because dealing with a diagnosis and just trying to figure out that and doing that on your own, you can hire a health and fitness coach who can give you an exact plan. There isn't any guesswork. Okay. And that's one thing that I help my clients with is there's no guesswork. We can just, we got the plan going. Okay. So. And just also know that it's never too late to get started. As I said before, whether you're, you know, 40 or 50 or 60 or 70, it is not too late to get started. You only look forward and you do not look back. And I think if we can just think about it that way and know that I'm not looking back at what I did, I'm only going to look about, at the, at my future self. Right. And know that you don't have to be perfect. As I said, this isn't something that you need. Like Dr. Jen's 17 year old son spends two hours in the gym. You don't need to spend two hours in the gym. Just getting started with two to three days a week can be very beneficial for you.

Yeah. So let's also, and even if you're not going to the gym, I mean you can do sit ups and push ups and lunges and squats and that kind of thing and planks.

You can do all that stuff. Everything home. I, I work out at home too. I've been working out. I don't, I haven't stepped foot in a gym for about 12 years. I do have equipment at home, but everything you, you do, you can do at home. I have ladies who pull out their workout equipment under their bed and they're doing it right in their bedroom, right in front of their mirror. And that's all you need. You don't need fancy equipment. You can literally get a set of dumbbells from, you know, Walmart or Target and that's all you need. So this is not something that requires a whole lot of investment.

And again, like we're not saying to do this so that you have cut arms or you know, whatever, that's a byproduct. That is a, I mean that is a wonderful benefit. But we're saying to do this because it increases metabolism, because it decreases blood sugar, because it allows for blood sugar regulation, because it decreases insulin, it helps to build stronger bones and, and strengthen your back. Back pain is one of the biggest complaints in this country. So. And ultimately if you don't move your body, you are going to lose function in your body. And it is miserable to spend the last 10, 15 years in and out of the hospital because you don't have the function left in your body. And I love that you say that it's never too late to get started. And we're not saying to not do cardiovascular exercise, but I think as you cross from your 40s to your 50s, you just need to shift where you break things up. And you have to start to bring in that strength training because you will lose muscle mass. You said after 30.

Absolutely. You're not immune. No one is immune to it. So I. I just. We need to think about it again, as this is something that we do. Think about the advice that you would give someone who was younger. Right. As you would give your kids. I think about that all the time when I'm telling my kids to maybe do something that maybe I wouldn't want to do. Well, we just. We owe it to ourselves.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

And.

And we didn't talk much about flexibility, but flexibility ends up being really important, too, because that is how we connect our muscles and our. So we want to make sure that we continue to keep that signaling open.

Absolutely. Flexibility and mobility is so important. That's a whole other topic.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, and as you said, it's never too late to get started. So if people want more information from you, where can they find you?

Okay. The best way to reach out to me is Ellen Ludwig Fitness on Instagram. I'm also Ellen Ludwig Fitness on Facebook. If you're a Facebook user, but very active on those two platforms, I have a lot of free strength training workouts on that platform. I share healthy recipes, healthy tips, lots of free information for you geared towards women in their 40s and beyond.

Amazing. Amazing. Ellen, it was so wonderful to have you here today. And I know that this information is going to be super valuable. If you found this valuable, please share it with your friends so that they can hear it. Because truthfully, we are all better when we help each other and lift each other up. And this is a beautiful community that we are building here, and we just want to grow it so that people can. We can all be healthier, right?

Absolutely. Thanks, Dr. Jen, for having me. Valuable.

It was great. It was great.

So I will see you next time. It's Dr. Jen. Bye for now.

Thank you for joining me on this episode of the Keeping a breast podcast with Dr. Jen. I hope you found the discussion informative and empowering. Remember, breast health is health. So by staying in informed and taking proactive steps, you have the power to optimize your well being. My team and I encourage you to apply the knowledge gained from today's episode to make positive changes in your life and share what you've learned with others. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to our podcast and leave us a review. Your feedback and support mean the world to us and help us to reach more people who can benefit from these conversations. Stay connected with me on social media where I share additional resources, advice, updates and announcements related to breast health. You can find me on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. Dr. Jennsimmons and remember, my Jen has two ends, so until next time, remember to stay proactive, informed and confident in your breast health journey. The key to your health is you.

Sam.